Transmission Range Limiting Factors Of Underwater Optical Wireless Communication (UOWC)

Underwater is an approximately unknown world that contains intact sources. According to reports of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, only ۵% of this world has been investigated or discovered. To conduct investigations and monitor the underwater environment, especially in deep waters, it's indispensable, to establish a reliable wireless communication link with adequate bandwidth between underwater vehicles and sensors to communicate together and with the surface. Thus, the construction and development of such communication links having acceptable performance in challenging underwater environment difficulties are on the agenda of scientific and research centers. However, the acoustic waves have deeply been investigated and accepted as the default underwater wireless communication medium due to their long-range, but these waves suffer from limited bandwidth, high latency, multipath propagation, and often extreme Doppler effect due to relative motions. Instead, the demand for high-speed wireless communication has made optical waves the most promising underwater communication medium when high-speed data transmission is required. In contrast with their significantly high bandwidth, optical waves have a short transmission range up to a few hundreds of meters. Thus, this article is focused on the agents challenging the optical wave propagation range in an underwater environment. In the following, while getting acquainted with these limiting factors, the most important one (absorption loss) is discussed in detail.

کلیدواژه ها:

Underwater ، optical wireless ، underwater optical wireless communication ، absorption loss